


Caged

by NaraMerald



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Anti-zoo sentiment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-08
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-05-25 11:58:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6194326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NaraMerald/pseuds/NaraMerald
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sakura becomes emotionally involved on a mission. Team 7 are curious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It’s night time. Sakura sits behind bars, staring out at the night. She can barely stand up, and she’s not tall. When she sits, only worse missions keep her from cringing from the smell and refusing to sit on the dirty floor. Sakura is lucky she can get in and out at will. The unconscious lion next to her is not so lucky. She sits next to the slumbering body and stares at the zoo, wanting to weep. 

She cycles her chakra through his system again but she knows the damage can’t be undone. The Lion’s joints don’t function properly; he’s never been able to run. He can’t leap to the heights he should. His nails, far too long, became infected with the filth on the floor of the cage. Visiting the zoo as part of her mission one day, she looked into his eyes and she saw a wish for death. 

After that, every night she visited the zoo. 

She doesn’t know why she can’t help but return. The wolves are separated, and at night she breaks their cages so they can huddle together as a pack. They stare at her warily, scenting each other and piling together like they might not ever experience each others’ touch again. 

Toshi, the elephant, she takes on a walking tour of the park using a gentle genjutsu to direct it. She had to disinfect a gash first, caused from the elephant head butting his tiny cage door. But he seems happier now he can walk. She lets him into the giant pond in the centre of the zoo and nearly drains her chakra ensuring the sound of his happy noises won’t carry and ruin her mission. 

The foxes sleep. Even when she opens their cages, inviting them out, they stare at her apathetically. One of them, she thinks, has lost the will to live. She’s monitoring her carefully, but her weight has been dropping alarmingly. Another fox has huddled up around her, but Sakura has seen it in her patients too often not to have the understanding that it’s the beginning of the end. She tries her best to make it comfortable. 

She spends time with the monkeys, the tanuki, the kangaroos. Some animals she’s never seen before. The flamingos nuzzle her hair. Most of the animals recognize her- her scent, her appearance, her chakra; she’s not sure. But they associate her with comfort and freedom. The elephant’s trunk snuffles softly over her (kind of gross) but affectionately, the foxes don’t bare their teeth when she approaches anymore. The monkeys chitter and grab the food she brings them. The penguins adore the slides and shelves she make out of ice and the way she purifies and sprinkles their water at them.

But the lion is as feral as he was at the beginning, recognizing her as one of them. Perhaps, she thinks, it’s because there are no other lions. None of his kind that he can share camaraderie with, like the wolves. They can get through the day without touching, because at night she makes the bars disappear for them. 

But the lion stares at her as she approaches and snarls, ready to sink his teeth into her hands. Sakura is actually one of the few Ninja who now wrestle a lion on a semi-regular basis. When she puts him to sleep, she heals as many of his aches as she can, knowing that even without active maltreatment, deprivation of the space he needs causes stress on his joints. She runs her fingers through his mane, strokes his flanks because she hopes that even unconscious, he is comforted by the touch of another being, of knowing he isn’t alone. 

It’s the beginning of the end when Sasuke and Naruto come to collect her. Naruto is all cheer, Sasuke being cleared for simple missions again and Sakura ready to finish her mission and return to Konoha. She’s lucky, at first, that Naruto swallows the bull she feeds him about being gone all night and Sasuke, while reformed, still tends to focus on himself first and foremost. (Sakura has long since resigned herself to this. In the time when Sasuke was under house arrest in Konoha, she grew to understand him more. Her love for him evolved. It is hard to love someone when you know without a doubt that they don’t- can’t- ever love you back. Their relationship- their friendship- improved for it.) 

She’s careful when she sneaks out that night. She makes some excuse (she’s pretty sure Sasuke thinks she has a lover) and when she arrives at the zoo, she’s nearly crushed by a wave of regret. When she leaves, the zoo will go back to the way it was before. This town is too far away for her to make any kind of regular trip without being suspicious. It breaks her heart to think of all the animals, trapped here, in pain,　waiting for death. 

She lets the monkeys clamber over her while she walks to the elephant enclosure, smiling despite herself as the large grey trunk wraps gently around her waist in greeting. She’s taken to riding around on his back and thinks he genuinely enjoys the companionship. The bear barrels around the park, scrapping his claws on the trees. She winces a little knowing the damage will be difficult to explain. But they’ve got limited time left – they might as well enjoy themselves. 

The last cage she visits are the foxes, and she thinks maybe subconsciously she knew. The female fox is dead, and the others are lying next to her, solemn and sad. Sakura strokes the fur of the fox and feels grateful that at least it isn’t in pain. She doesn’t even realise she’s crying until she’s almost back in the apartment. She doesn’t think Sasuke will notice (or indeed care) about her tears. She’s wrong. 

~

“Naruto,” Sasuke comments, after she disappears quietly into the house. Naruto tilts his head back without words, waiting to hear what the Uchiha has to say. 

“Sakura…” Sasuke begins and trails off. No matter how compulsory his therapy sessions are, he still doesn’t like to talk. 

“She’s sad,” Naruto observes, because he’s not always the most astute, but he has a way with people. 

“Last night she was crying,” Sasuke says, and they don’t need to say anything else. They both resolve to follow her the following night. 

~ 

Sakura’s half distracted, half distressed, which is probably why she doesn’t notice their chakra signatures following her. The Flamingos butt their heads into her, gently, affectionately, as she slips her hands over them, continuing to heal their malnutrition even as she feeds them the best food for them. Bread, she knows, does not provide adequate protein for strong bones. If birds survive on a diet just of bread, their legs can snap. It’s a death sentence, in captivity and in the wild. 

The Tanuki yip as they chase her around, staying clear of the wolves as she unblocks their cages and feeds them red meat. Her mission expenses have been high but her chakra stores have slowly increased from working so hard every night. The elephant, Toshi, is ecstatic as he plays in the water and Sakura nearly shrieks as he playfully soaks her with his trunk. The leopard yowls in impatience as she releases him and they play chasey and she gears up to wrestle the lion again. So little time left to try and fix so much. It’s the foxes, again, who are guarding another fox, who surprise her. 

The fox they’re guarding is pregnant. She’s so hopeful, as she throws her chakra out in an energy draining quick scan. Maybe this will bring their life back to them. But then she thinks of the fox who literally gave up on life- for whom death and oblivion was better than life in the zoo. That’s no way for a child to live. She’s deep in thought as she wrestles the lion, nearly taking a nasty scratch for it. She dodges at the last second and puts the lion to sleep, glowing green fingers on his neck as he sinks into the floor of his cage. 

She knows the keepers here try their best- she’s watched. If it were a case of threatening them, well, she would. But the zoo is sorely underfunded and the keepers under qualified. They know little of disease or medicine. They are paid next to nothing, and are assigned more animals to look after in a day than they can do. And the city co-run the zoo with a central government, so taking out one person would make no difference. She does not have time needed to fix the problem. 

It’s when she’s practically mediating, rubbing down the lion and untangling the knots in his fur that she senses them. Naruto and Sasuke. She snorts. She should have known. 

She makes no indication that she knows they’re there; finishes the massage, uses a douton to clean out the mangy cage and then plays with the monkeys for a while, swinging off of the trees, hanging upside down with them. She’s blocking out her departure day from her mind. She’s choosing not to think of Toshi reaching his trunk out for the girl who will never come, the Tanuki waiting to try and wrestle the rag from her hands, the bear who will grow so restless he will throw himself at his cage over and over again. 

Because if she thinks about it, she wants to put her head in her hands and sob. But she’s a ninja, so she simply puts on an impassive face and goes home. Sasuke and Naruto return an hour after her and not a word is spoken. But she feels them watching the next night when they go out. 

~  
Naruto sees the healing chakra in her hands and the sadness in her eyes and he clenches his fists. But he also sees the elephant’s joy and the penguins waddling after her and his heart lifts. Sasuke sees the way she stubbornly helps the lion, wrestling him down gently and giving him a reason to live, to continue fighting. Even if she’s an enemy, she’s something different to the monotony of the lion’s life. He also sees the way she looks around the zoo in despair. She’s right to. The minute she leaves, the zoo will fall back into the same patterns. She doesn’t have mission authorization to expose herself; even this is unprofessional.　However, Sasuke realizes how hypocritical that statement would be coming from him, and just sighs quietly to himself. He thinks, quite rightly, that leaving the animals here to suffer will destroy a part of Sakura. He’s very sure, as he watches her quietly stroke the lion’s mane, and lean against the metal bars, that the zoo will destroy the animals. 

Even as she cuddles a baby panda, Sakura doesn’t shed tears. They don’t need to visual proof to know her heart is crying.


	2. Freedom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 2- Naruto "plans"

Sasuke knows Naruto won’t be able to help himself. Sakura will be a good little soldier and trudge home with heavy feet and an even heavier, guilt-ridden heart, but Naruto will just charge in headfirst and follow his heart. He wonders vaguely if anything will be left standing in the town once Naruto’s done. 

“We’re gonna save them, right Sasuke?” He asks, as if it’s a given. Since Sasuke can’t see Sakura arguing too hard against this one, and he isn’t inclined to either, he’s pretty sure it’s a given. There’s three more nights until they leave. He decides to let Naruto do what he does best, and sits back to observe. 

That night, they approach Sakura. She’s not surprised to see them, but then, none of them were really bothering to hide from each other. This time it’s Sasuke wrestling the lion, spending that time to really challenge it. It tries viciously to kill him, but that’s alright really, because in his line of work, most things do. In the elephant pen, it’s hard to tell who is more overjoyed at the new friendship, Toshi or Naruto as he declares “I am the king!” from the treetops next to Toshi (he wanted to ride his back until Sakura bluntly told him humans are to big for elephants and it’s practically torture) then has a water fight with him. They steer clear of the foxes, still protecting their kit from the humans, to Kurama’s rumbling approval. Sasuke studiously avoids the monkeys but leads the penguins on a marching parade of the park which has Naruto literally on the ground in laughter. 

“Holy shit, that’s so funny!” he gasps with laughter. When Sasuke turns around to glare at him, the line of penguins behind him copy him and turn around. Even Sakura can’t resist her giggles then. With extremely offended dignity, Sasuke ignores them and resumes the walk. The Penguins waddle after him. The flamingoes just flat out aren’t as interested in them as they are in Sakura, and Sakura flatly refuses to lessen her panda-cuddling time. 

“Get your own, Sasuke!” she sticks her tongue out at him. Sasuke will probably never express the relief that unfurls in his chest at seeing her happier.   
When he herds the wolves back into their correct pens and replaces the bars separating them, he’s already thinking of ways to assist Naruto’s plan. 

~ 

Naruto’s plan, as it is, is very simple. So much that one could argue there wasn’t really a plan. 

“So we’re gonna free the animals, right Sakura-chan?” Naruto springs on her one day. Amid all her spluttering and his suggestions, it immediately becomes clear that his plan actually just consists of the words “free the animals”. Luckily, Sasuke has already noted the very dated security system, easy to fail, and decided exactly who is going to take the fall for the mass breakout. 

~   
It takes a lot of planning to somehow make most of the security systems go offline at the same time Sakura helps by idly pointing out the ways they could plausibly release certain cages as faults. Problem is, they can’t get _all_ of them, not at the same time. So Sasuke meets a contact of his for a particular purchase. He’s vaguely hopeful he can get it back without Naruto seeing. 

“Sasuke…” Naruto begins. Sasuke sighs mentally. 

“Is there something you want to tell us?” Naruto jeers, as Sasuke unwinds the giant leopard pelt from where it’s clipped around his belt. It’s true, he could have been wearing a large, furry skirt, but … no, even Sasuke wasn’t foolish enough to delude himself that Naruto was more mature than these kinds of comments. 

“Smuggling? Really?” Sakura isolates his reasoning immediately. Sasuke glares. 

“Do you have a better idea?” he challenges. (No, they don’t.)   
They shut up, and he gets to writing a suspicious note and sticking a rubber band around a wad of cash. 

HERE IS THE PAYMENT. TELL NO ONE. 

He looks it over. It’s not the most inspired note but... eh. Naruto starts snorting, literally holding his sides as increasingly obvious snickers burst out. 

“Do you have a better idea?” Sasuke grinds out. 

“Nope,” Naruto backs away, still grinning, hands held up. 

That’s that, really. It takes him mere minutes to plant them in the manager’s home, practically child’s play. Then they begin packing their things for the return to Konoha. 

“Say, Sasuke… what are we going to do with all the animals?” Naruto wonders quietly. Sasuke shrugs. What? Not his part of the plan. What’s that phrase? He looks at Naruto, hanging with the chimpanzees. Oh yes, _Not my circus, not my monkey!_

~ 

They’ve got their things ready to go, when they sneak back in, no traces of their allegiance left behind. Then they set off the alarm, which automatically springs some of the cages, and begin setting the others up. 

“Time to go!” Naruto whoops, and the monkeys go batshit right from the start. 

“FLY MY PRETTIES!” Naruto screams, as Sasuke and Sakura exchange long-suffering looks. 

Sasuke knocks out the lion (“Well, we can’t leave him to rampage all over the town Sasuke… the foxes and the wolves are smart enough to slink off into the night, but where exactly is the lion going to go?!”) and hoists him over his shoulders. He’d thought about trying a sealing scroll but things didn’t always come out of them alive. In fact… his track record was zero, which Sakura was well aware of. 

Then they begin the procession. 

In the end, the wolves flee, the monkeys riot over the town, the foxes stay in their cages (Sakura secretly hopes they’ll sneak out after they’ve gone) and the birds take flight nearly immediately. That still leaves a long parade of animals from kangaroos to flamingos, hyenas to the hippopotamus. Sakura erects a sling for the tiny hedgehogs and other small animals which the elephant and hippo seem happy enough to carry. And of course… the penguins follow Sasuke. Even despite the strain of holding a genjustu on approximately 100 animals on a busy road, even despite stepping in animal shit yet again, Sakura and Naruto still manage to spend the 5 days to Konoha giggling at Sasuke and his copyca- well, copy penguins. 

Kotetsu and Izumo smell them coming long before they actually hit the gates. But when they drop the genjustsu well in advance, jaws drop. 

“What the fuc-”

“Best get the Hokage.” 

~

“What the fuck made you bring half a zoo back to Konoha?” Tsunade asks flatly.

“I’ll buy you a lot of sake,” Naruto interjected. 

“BRAT! That’ll be the least of your reparations…” she growls, before looking behind Sasuke. Shizune is giggling in the doorway. Sasuke turns and the line of penguins who’ve apparently snuck in behind him turn too. Everyone giggles. 

“Fine. But you’re getting the lion into training ground 44!” She growls. 

 

~ 

In the end, life doesn’t change much. Tsunade lets them set aside a spare training ground where some of the animals live. The flamingos and the penguins, Sakura and Sasuke find, are permanent household members now- Ino loves stroking the flamingos and cooing at them when she visits Sakura. (Sasuke tells no one that he enjoys the company in the lonely Uchiha compound. Naruto groans constantly about why he didn’t get to keep the monkeys.) 

And if Konoha shinobi now have a small advantage in knowing to watch out for the lion? Well, that’s for Konoha’s genin to know, and Mist’s genin to find out in the next Shinobi exams…


End file.
